1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for specifying a color material to be used when printing an image in an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A direct printing system is widely used, in which a digital camera that serves as an image supplying apparatus, and a printer device that serves as an image forming apparatus are directly connected to each other without using a personal computer (PC). In such a direct printing system, the digital camera directly transfers an image stored in the digital camera to the printer device, thereby printing the image by the printer without using a PC. In recent years, various direct printing systems have been developed. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-64740 discloses a conventional technology in which the digital camera communicates with the printer device in accordance with a predetermined communication procedure, thereby enabling the direct printing. Furthermore, a conventional technology is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-244630, in which image feature data is generated in the digital camera by extracting features of an image, the image feature data is saved as well as the image, and an image correcting process is executed for the image in the printer device by using the image feature data.
In the conventional technologies, when an image is taken by the digital camera and the image is printed by the printer device, it is difficult to specify a color material to be used when printing an image. For example, in some cases, a printer device reproduces black color by mixing color materials of four colors, such as cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K), even if a monochrome image is to be printed. However, in an above situation, when compared with printing of an image by reproducing black color by using the color material K without using other color materials, printing performance, such as a processing time and a processing cost required for printing an image, and an image quality may be degraded.